Organic-based light-emitting components, for example organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), are being used increasingly widely in general lighting, for example as a flat light source.
An organic light-emitting component, for example an OLED, may include an anode and a cathode with an organic functional layer system between them. The organic functional layer system may include one or more emitter layers, in which electromagnetic radiation is generated, a charge carrier pair generation layer structure having two or more charge carrier pair generation layers (“charge generating layer”, CGL) for charge carrier pair generation, and one or more electron barrier layers, also referred to as hole transport layer(s) (HTL), and one or more hole barrier layers, also referred to as electron transport layer(s) (ETL), in order to direct the flow of current.
The trend in OLEDs is tending toward ever-larger components, with correspondingly ever-larger luminous surfaces. However, the problem of OLEDs failing spontaneously by an internal short circuit increases with the size of the OLED surface. The reason for this may be minute particles that may be included between the substrate and the cover glass during the manufacture of the OLED, which may penetrate through the organic layers and cause a short circuit. Such potential short circuits cannot always be detected reliably during the component test, and accordingly the corresponding components cannot always be detected and rejected, which can lead to failures.
One measure for filtering out components potentially at risk is a cost-intensive test method, which has to be carried out individually for each OLED before delivery to the customer.